PC Gamer senior editor Rich Stanton called Metal Gear Solid Delta a “safe, but excellent” remake in his review, but the extent to which Konami faithfully recreated even the most minute aspects of 2004’s Snake Eater has been tickling our lizard brain nostalgia centers. You can still wait until sniper boss The End dies of old age, and you can still muck about with the system clock to do it.
When I was a dumb idiot child playing MGS3 for the first time, I somehow failed to collect the Dragunov sniper rifle and was convinced I’d soft locked myself from ever getting it. Looking back I believe I was wrong, but remember: Dumb idiot child.
This was a problem when it came time to square off in a sniper duel with The End, a legendary Cobra Unit marksman who is 100 years old, wears a photosynthetic ghillie suit, and fought in the Normandy landing. You can also beat the fight by sneaking up on The End and holding him up or shooting at him with a regular non-sniper gun, but I did not have the requisite skills in the eighth grade.
Thankfully, I learned of an Easter egg in the fight via GameFAQs: Save your game during the battle, leave for two weeks, then come back, and the geriatric warrior will have died of old age in a classic bit of Kojima meta humor.
Or, if you’re an impatient little twerp who’s bad at stealth games and wants to rush through the story, just set your PS2 system clock forward instead, cheating the war hero of his pathos and closure.
I’m positively tickled that the bit has been recreated in Delta, and you can even still take the low road with system clock shenanigans to replicate it if you want to skip one of the best sniper fights in gaming for whatever reason—I’m like 80% sure you can go back and grab the Dragunov if you miss it!
This also isn’t the only hidden way to take out The End that’s returned in the remaster. If you go in the opposite direction of circa-2008 me and get the Dragunov early, you can pick off The End while he’s chilling in his wheelchair on the pier after the scene where Ocelot plays Super Russian Roulette with Sokolov.
Save your game during the fight, come back two weeks later. Dead End.
- Save game at the start of the fight
- Exit MGS Delta
- Right-click on the time in the Windows system tray and choose “adjust date and time”
- Turn off “Set the time automatically”
- Click “change” on “Set date and time manually”
- Change the date to anything above two weeks into the future, click the tick symbol, and then the change button
- Reopen the game and reload the save, you sneaky cheater